Insurer Is Vicariously Liable for TCPA Wrongdoing of 3rd-Party Agents: Complaint

Yazmin Gonzalez began receiving “a barrage of illegal telemarketing calls” in December made on behalf of Liberty Bankers Life Insurance by “an unknown anonymous telemarketer” soliciting Liberty’s insurance policies, alleged her Telephone Consumer Protection Act complaint Tuesday (docket 3:24-cv-00201) in U.S. District Court for Western Texas in El Paso. The pro se plaintiff “seeks redress under the TCPA, demanding that the calls stop,” it said. Liberty appointed Muhammad Baloch, a licensed insurance agent and a nonparty to the suit, “with the knowledge and expectation that Baloch would make phone calls to solicit Liberty’s products and services,” said the complaint. Liberty had the responsibility to ensure that the agents it appointed and authorized to solicit its products “obeyed federal and state consumer protection laws,” it said. Gonzalez received at least 12 calls between Dec. 8 and May 6 from a variety of spoofed phone numbers from telemarketers and direct Liberty employees soliciting life insurance on the defendant's behalf, though the Texas resident personally listed her cellphone number on the national do not call registry in March 2022, it said. Liberty “knew or should have known the requirements for making TCPA-compliant telemarketing calls and thus knew or should have known that the calls complained of herein violate the TCPA and its regulations,” said the complaint. The company also is “is well aware of the regulations regarding the TCPA and the ethical prohibition surrounding unsolicited direct advertising to consumers with whom no preexisting relationship exists,” it said. Liberty is vicariously liable under “federal common law principles of agency” for TCPA violations committed by third-party telemarketers, it said.